Adsense may increase traffic - but not for long

Have 3 year old "shopping comparison" website. (Bizrate connected)

Site has thousands of internal links and a couple dozen inbound links. Yet even with this low traffic I still make about $5 / mo.

Google figured out long ago that it was a shopping comparison site and devalued it to the point where it gets only about 50 impressions a day (verified by webmaster tools). It had been this way for over a year.

Had written the site off for dead then I decided what the heck, and put some adsense code in.

Two days later - Google started giving the site traffic. Over the next week - it got 15,000 impressions. Quality score (as reflected by conversion rate) increased as well. (ie: % actually increased) I earned $25 from the store and another $15 from Google that week. Alone.

After a week - Google then slowly reduced the impressions back to it's "normal" rate of 50 impressions per day. (Took about another week). Now site is dead again.

What this prooves ....
1. That adsense code does help. At least for a short period of time on sites that have existed for a while before code was installed.
2. That quality and conversion rate actually improves with impressions. (ie. percentage increase. not just one for one. This explains how high traffic sites have higher conversion rates (by %) than low traffic sites.
3. That Google (not you) is in control of the success of your website. The increase in conversion means that this site IS relevant and useful. It is Google who has determined that comparrison sites are of no value. (Unless you are Bizrate or Shopzilla and spend millions to buy Google juice.)

You can't really say that your observations "prove" anything. It could be that making changes to your site makes it more up to date and Google likes new content. There is not enough evidence to show that G gives your site better rankings because you put in their ads. On the other hand, what you assert is widely suspected.

What this prooves ....
1. That adsense code does help. At least for a short period of time on sites that have existed for a while before code was installed.
2. That quality and conversion rate actually improves with impressions. (ie. percentage increase. not just one for one. This explains how high traffic sites have higher conversion rates (by %) than low traffic sites.
3. That Google (not you) is in control of the success of your website. The increase in conversion means that this site IS relevant and useful. It is Google who has determined that comparrison sites are of no value. (Unless you are Bizrate or Shopzilla and spend millions to buy Google juice.)

It looks like the "freshness" factor could have been a factor as Dave indicated and possibly relevancy. Try freshening the site up again, keep the ads on, make us of your keywords in a few more places and see what happens from there.

I'm of the opinion that adding Adsense to a website is not going to increase your rankings but new, fresh content combined with what the ads can provide to the user can help your rankings and traffic, as you noted, for a time.

In my third signature site, if I don't work on it for months, it's rankings drop, traffic slows down and of course so do my earnings. After a day or so of doing my thing, thinks jump back to normal and remain that way for a few more months. It's a lot of ongoing work.

You can't really say that your observations "prove" anything. It could be that making changes to your site makes it more up to date and Google likes new content. There is not enough evidence to show that G gives your site better rankings because you put in their ads. On the other hand, what you assert is widely suspected.

Called by me, the non-linear news effect and the news bump by other people.

even i do not think there is any relation with the adsense and the traffic on the website...

Even if it is you can't really say that this is what really happened. To me ( if what you say would be right ) it's like a thing I notice:
When you launch a new website if it is correctly in terms of SEO the you will reach the first page of google for 1 - 2 weeks - something like a help from Google. After that is back to work.